


Summer, 1985

by profangirlintoomanyfandoms



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25681813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profangirlintoomanyfandoms/pseuds/profangirlintoomanyfandoms
Summary: Post-Season 2. Does not follow Season 3 developments.It's summer, 1985. Billy and Steve were in a relationship. Until they weren't. And it's been a year, and maybe it's time they both moved on and forgot each other.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Summer, 1985

**Author's Note:**

> "How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." - Kurt Vonnegut.

Billy goes to military school in Maine. The school is everything he expected it would be – a bunch of rich kids and outcasts who got dumped there because their parents couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Maine Maritime Military School is all stone walls and grey uniforms and clanging lesson bells and Billy hates it, he _hates_ it. He misses Californian sun and the ringing sound of teenage laughter echoing over sandy beaches. And he hates it, but he misses brown hair and brown eyes and smothered smiles in the back of a BMW too.

But Hawkins is done now. He’s in Maine and he’s in a stupid uniform and his hair is cropped short, but honestly there’s nothing for him back there. There’s a grave in California. There’s a carcass of a would-be relationship in Indiana. So he looks at the bloodless walls, at the monotone uniforms, at the sneering boys, and tells himself he likes this place. He’ll _make_ himself like this place.

He keeps his head down, does his work. He doesn’t challenge the hierarchy and ends up falling in somewhere with the theatre kids and the nerds – the lower middle-class of high school society. He mostly sleepwalks through his life. He doesn’t think about the future. But he gets good grades, and his teachers applaud him, says he’s _got potential_. They tell Neil so. They tell him his son’s got potential, and are they considering higher education, perhaps a flagship state university, maybe even an Ivy League. It’s the first time he’s seen Neil that happy in years. Neil pats him on the shoulder, says, “maybe military school worked, smacked the faggot out of you”. Billy nods, says, “yes, sir,” and watches Neil drive away after the parent-teacher meeting. He wishes he was dead.

Military school has not smacked the faggot out of him. Either way, he doubts any form of corporal punishment could smack the ideas out of his brain. The part of his brain which still thinks about midnight Hawkins roads and soft cashmere sweaters and _miss me, princess_ and soft brown hair and dimples in a once-familiar smile. These thoughts are reserved for nights. Nights are for _maybes_ and _what-ifs_. So, come night, Billy thinks and thinks and wishes he’s anyone but who he is.

And then he’s graduating – valedictorian, of all things – and suddenly the future is here. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. His teachers want him to go to university. And sure, he gets good grades, he’s clever, he _knows_ he’s clever, but he doesn’t like the idea of university. _Bunch of people sitting around, fucking snobs, thinking they’re better and smarter than they actually are._

But he can’t go back, not to California, not to…not to Hawkins. Because there’s nothing there, not anymore, and Billy has to remember that, has to tell himself that almost every day.

So he tells himself he’ll go somewhere close. Somewhere he could disappear. Somewhere where people don’t care who you are or where you’re from, somewhere where people only look forward, they only ever look forward. The place people go to disappear.

Then it comes to him. And by the time they’ve finished handing out all the diplomas, Billy Hargrove’s in his Camaro, ignoring the stench of memories from the backseat, hurtling down the highway to New York.

* * *

And maybe back in Hawkins, Steve is getting antsy. He’s clocked in a year working for his dad at a boring, lifeless firm doing boring, lifeless work. Every morning, he puts his briefcase filled with nothing down at his cubicle, does about an hour of actual work, and spends the rest of the morning rearranging files and counting down the hours to lunch, then counting down the hours to 5:30. He allows himself to be dragged to liquid lunches, learns to laugh at partners’ jokes, nod intelligently at data briefings, and how to tie a tie correctly.

Somewhere in there, he gets a boring, lifeless girlfriend, they have boring, lifeless sex, and then he breaks up with her, just to add a little spice to that semblance of a relationship.

He sees his future, all 50 years of it, in that year. And it’s easy, it's _so_ easy, in between the cigarette smoke from hotel bars and the synchronized clacking of typewriters and the lipsticked, wide-toothed grin of his all-too-nothing, all-too-everything girlfriend, to wonder about the Ambien in the upstairs bathroom, or the 5 bottles of tequila in the liquor cabinet that is never locked, or maybe just going out to his BMW one day and just fucking flooring it.

But his dad is proud of him. He calls him into his office and tells him so. He’s proud of his work at the office, proud of his sensible girlfriend, proud of him overall. He’s “finally grown up now” and “become a man now”. His mom is proud of him too. She fixes him a whole three-course meal that she actually cooked herself and tells him so. She ruffles his hair – she hasn’t done that since he was six – and says she’s “happy he’s finally moved on from his younger high school years”. She tells him she likes Cecilia, she’s a wonderful girl, very good upbringing, and puts another turkey leg on his plate.

Steve nods and smiles and wishes he could strangle himself with his tie.

He misses Billy. He can admit that now.

Everyone has moved on. High school seems distant – now that Tommy and Carol and all the others are graduating and questions of the future are here and locker gossip pales in comparison to exams and studying. People remember Billy, talk about him sometimes, but only when the conversation’s running out of topics. The girls giggle: _he was so gorgeous_ and _I heard he kissed Betty, took her out to Lovers’ Lake_ and _where did he move to again_. The boys laugh: _Jesus what a fucking queer_ and _heard he got whaled on by his dad, the bent bitch_ and _thank Jesus he’s gone now, don’t know who he’d have tried to stick his prick into_. But there’s no real interest there, no real malice. He’s a distant memory to be used as kindling for a dying conversational fire.

He seems a distant memory too. Steve can’t remember him anymore. Only parts of him. The mole on his back. The roughness of his hands. The rumble of his voice when he’s laughing. But he can’t envision him, as a whole. He can’t put the pieces together, form the entirety of Billy in his mind.

And it’s the thought of forgetting Billy that terrifies him into action. So maybe that’s why, when Nancy asks him if he’s considered NYU, that that’s where she and Jonathan are headed, and whether he’d like to go with them, it’s not too late to apply, he says yes.

Because New York is for forgetting, and anything is better than being stuck in this state of limbo. Sitting in his BMW with his arms wrapped around a girl and thinking about the backseat, about a lightning flash of a laugh and _you have shit taste in music, Harrington_ , but not remembering the exact brand of cigarettes he smoked, the faint smell of his cologne that clung to his clothes. Hearing his laughter but not remembering his smile. Feeling the intensity of his glare but not remembering just how many different colours his eyes could be.

So he says yes. New York is for forgetting, and maybe it’s time to move on from Billy Hargrove.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick little one-shot I did. Quarantine is driving me to revisit old habits like writing for fun and reading until I fall asleep, and it's terrifying that I'm having a mid-life existential crisis before I even hit 20. I even downloaded Minecraft again. But anyway. I hope you enjoyed this, and constructive criticism is always welcome so let me know what you think!


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